


Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions

by page_runner



Category: Leverage
Genre: Fluff, Gardening, Multi, and using fic as a coping strategy, immediately post-finale, today we're mad about HOAs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:49:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23895595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/page_runner/pseuds/page_runner
Summary: It's time to leave the Brewpub and soon they'll start their new chapter as Leverage Inc, International. But first, the trio have some things to take care of, closer to home.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Comments: 30
Kudos: 126
Collections: 2019 Leverage Secret Santa Exchange





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [epeeblade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/epeeblade/gifts).



> ...who asked for "Parker, Hardison, and Eliot figuring things out for their first job on their own" and also "Quiet character moments. Like going out to see a movie together, only it turns into a sorta job..." This doesn't have a movie, but it does have a sorta job! :)
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

It's quiet, in the moments after they leave. Like the round stillness of a car, just after the engine shuts off. He keeps expecting noise to enter the picture again—not that noise can enter a _picture_ but— _ahh hell_ , he’s the mouthy one here, isn’t he? It’s not even that they’re looking at him to say something, not like they have anything that needs to be said. But the silence is growing from comfortable to deafening, smothering, and Nana always did say if he was breathing, he was talking, so he should say _something_ now, shouldn’t he?

For once, Alec Hardison has found himself at a loss for words.

“We should get a move on,” Eliot says finally, gentle, like he sees them as horses about to spook. 

Alec once spent a week obsessively drowning in horse facts, after he saw the way Eliot became _Eliot_ around the animals. He’s never told him that, of course, although he usually likes to flaunt his knowledge. It’s background research. Prep work for some future gift he hasn’t entirely planned out yet. Though maybe it’s time to start...

“Yes,” Parker says, trying to sound certain, and in charge, as she now is. She’s going to be great at it, and he wants to tell her that, but it’s another thing to swallow hard against, right now, when all he has are words. And he can’t seem to find those.

“I got us hotel rooms,” he says instead, relieved at the fallback of prep work for this job, at fulfilling the promise he’d made to Parker to plan for any eventuality. _Even if Nate proposing to Sophie and them waltzing out after our biggest job ever wasn’t something I’d specifically considered._ Not that he hadn’t guessed it would be coming. Not that they’d gotten the timing wrong. It had been perfect. No, hotel rooms—adjoining, to give Eliot the freedom of choice—had always been part of the preparations. The few, subtle ones they’d made, but barely discussed. 

They’re criminals. Used to disappearing in the middle of the night. Leaving this place behind shouldn’t be any different.

But none of them have moved. 

_I chose this building. High ceilings for Parker. A full restaurant for Eliot. A theater nearby for Sophie. A federal building to steal for Nate._ And now that they’ve done that; stolen the Black Book, played their hand, the rest is… disposable. It has to be. They’d only returned to the brewpub as a rendezvous point, in case Nate hadn’t predicted Sterling’s choice correctly. It was close and as secure as a hitter, hacker, and thief could make it. If he’d betrayed Nate, it would have been a quick regroup, full of escape routes they knew better than anyone, then off to pull their mastermind out of whatever pit he’d been thrown into. 

But Sterling’s cooperation just meant a slight delay in departure; a little more time to gather thoughts and things. They’d known for a month this was the Queen’s Gambit, with their current home as the queen. He’d known for much longer, keeping Nate’s secret from the others. And now…

Parker looks flat. Two dimensional almost, like she’s pressed up against a wall, willing herself to disappear. “We’re dead now,” she observes lightly. “Hotels are a good place to live when you’re dead.”

Technically, hotels are very much not a good place to live when you’re _pretending_ to be dead, unless one of you happens to be a genius hacker rerouting and erasing surveillance footage. “Only mostly dead,” he teases. Parker sometimes takes faked deaths strangely literally. Eliot gives him a sharp glance. 

“We ain’t dead, and we ain’t stayin’ in a hotel. Not tonight. We’re goin’ to my place,” Eliot says, a reassuring list of certainties that make his heart swoop and his stomach dip. 

Alec can count on one hand the number of times he’s been to Eliot’s, and he won’t even need any fingers, because it’s _once_. Once when Eliot was all beat up after a job, insisting he was fine, just tired, and Alec was tired too, tired of hearing that, so tired he crossed that _fine_ line and insisted on driving his friend’s stubborn ass home. 

Even now, a few months into Eliot slowly softening like cookie dough left out to thaw, he’s always stayed over here, above the Brewpub, muttering that he might as well be closer to kitchen and the team anyway, since otherwise one of them is sure to burn the place down.

For the record, they are leaving this building intact and at their own pace. He’s oddly proud of that. It makes for a nice change, actually, leaving a place that’s not burnt quite yet, literally or figuratively. 

Parker relaxes, rounds out just slightly, at Eliot’s declaration. She’s been to Eliot’s, inside even, because she’s Parker and didn’t have a Nana who’d drilled the importance of waiting for an invitation into her skull. Not that he can think of a single other instance where he’d abided by that particular rule, but Eliot… Alec’s always been aware of boundaries with Eliot. The ones he’s okay to step over and the ones he’s not. Still, Eliot’s been growling for years about Parker stealing the sugary cereal he has no reason to be stocking in his cupboards in the first place, so maybe this is a threshold he should have barged across long ago.

“Yeah, man. Sounds good to me. Your place it is.”

Not that he needs to explain himself to anyone, but if he did, Eliot would protest that he made the offer because he knows his house is anonymous and far more secure than a stupid hotel room, _dammit, Hardison._ That’s the reason and it had nothing to do with the way Hardison’s mouth kept forgetting to make actual words, or because of the way Parker was condensing into a survival mode of essentials and practicalities, with her disturbing touch of the macabre, right before his eyes. She’s barely said a word either, but he’s less concerned about her talking than he is about Hardison being quiet. Parker’s used to up and running. 

But neither of them have ridden this out before. Not really. Sure they’ve turned their backs and walked away, but that’s different. This is a transition. Like leaving home. It leaves a person aimless and searching, even when done well and for good reason. Especially then, because then it’s not about survival, about bare essentials and staying one step ahead. There’s time and time isn’t always a friend. But he’s done his searching, and he knows who his home is now, so the only thing left is to secure it. Them. 

Ain’t no fancy hotel room going to help with that.

“Grab your stuff. No tellin’ how much of a headstart Sterling’s willing to grant us.” Sure, him, Nate and Sophie have their weird friendship-rivalry-flirtation going on, but that’s between the three of them. Eliot’s never going to trust Sterling further than he can throw him, and the man’s a surprisingly heavy bastard. Only a matter of time before someone raids this place. But all the sensitive stuff has already been shifted into storage at one of Parker’s warehouses. All that’s left is packed go-bags, including his old army duffle—too full given that he doesn’t even live here technically—waiting in the corner. He hefts and shoulders the weight, stoops to pick up theirs as well, but Parker’s quick fingers beat him to it. 

“Ready?” he asks her. Hardison shuffles up behind, tapping at his phone to turn out the lights. Eliot’s almost looking forward to subjecting him to plain old light switches. 

_Just wait, he’ll get bored by tomorrow afternoon and rewire the whole house_. 

The thought doesn’t upset him as much as it should. 

“It’s just a building,” Parker says, too late and too forced to fool him into believing her.

“Excuse you, I chose this _building_ special,” Hardison grumbles as they walk out through the empty hall, down to the loading dock. “Just a building. You know how few places fit all’y’all’s parameters?”

Eliot grunts, rather than acknowledge what Hardison considered _his_ parameters. He’d been slowly, subtly unloading his kitchen responsibilities over the past month. Marta would do just fine in his stead, and Amy practically managed the place for Hardison already. Once they were confirmed “dead” it would go to her to do with as she chose. It was for the best. Not like he _needed_ the kitchen. 

“Follow me in Lucille,” he orders instead, and walks to his car without looking back.

That’s the trick. Or not, because there’s no trick to it. Orpheus was just a fool.

Eliot’s been driving all of five minutes before Hardison says over the comms none of them have bothered to take out, “Hey man, I’m sorry.”

 _Sorry about what?_ He reviews everything stupid Hardison’s done lately, and discovers the list isn’t nearly as extensive as it used to be. Probably regretting the hotel rooms, and thinking he should have already bought them some over the top mansion to lay low in, like he’d done back in California. 

“It’s nothin’” Eliot says, giving the empty car around him a shrug just good measure. Sure he’d yelled at him about that stupid mansion, but it hadn’t had any toilets for chrissakes. (Until he’d put some in, grateful for having something to do with his hands that wasn’t wringing Sophie’s neck for going behind their backs.)

“It ain’t nothin’!” Hardison yelps, louder than is comfortable over the comms. “I know how much you put into that restaurant, El.”

 _Oh. Well fuck._ Explaining what he meant would make Hardison feel guilty and for once, he really doesn’t want to rile him up, right when everything is just the perfect balance of bittersweet. Sure, they’re walking away, like they do, but they’re walking away _together_. He’d miss the restaurant, sure, but he’d made his choice. “Where we movin’ next?” he asks instead, casually hitching himself to them, ignoring the way it makes his heart pound as he solidifies the “‘til death do us part” Sophie’d pried out of him with barely an effort. _How’s that for leverage._ “You gotta come up with some crazy idea before I can bitch at you an’ make it work.”

“We’ll plan it together this time,” Parker breaks in. “No secrets. We’ll choose together.” 

Eliot smiles as he presses the pedal another inch toward the floor, feeling the engine roar around him. In his rearview mirror, Lucille’s headlights keep pace.

It’s strange, walking through Eliot’s front door—reinforced based on the weight, and with a tiny reassuring creak to the hinges that she knows he’s left there on purpose. Usually, she comes in his bedroom window, so she doesn’t alarm him, or through the bathroom window, if she hears the shower going, because alarming a naked, sopping wet Eliot with suds in his hair is _fun_. 

(He could close that window, and does at night, but it’s small and high, and he likes it open to shower, particularly when it rains, mixing warm wet steam with cool wet scents. Sometimes, he sings.)

“Parker, you know where the bedroom is,” Eliot prompts her, giving her something to do with her hands, which do not understand how she is inside without any cleverness on their part. She takes Alec’s bag from him before he knows that it’s happening and spirits them away. 

Behind her, the boy’s voices fall into a mild version of their conversational tug-of-war. Alec’s all cautious and polite—for now—and Eliot...normally she’d anticipate Eliot getting irritated, sooner rather than later, but she’s pretty sure they’ve unlocked a new part of Eliot, like a new level in one of Alec’s games or a secret room behind a bookshelf. Same person, but with new terrain to explore. It’s exciting and a little intimidating, as is the idea of living in a _house_. She’s run away from every house she was put into, refusing to be caught in such a prison.

But that was before. Eliot’s homes are places to run away _to_. When she doesn’t want to be alone but doesn’t want people either. She chooses to go there. Chooses again and again. 

And now he’s chosen them. Officially. He told Nate. He promised Sophie. He brought them here.

 _To plan. We have a lot to plan and I’m the mastermind now and_ —

She’s ready. Or she will be, when she needs to be. And so will they. But… not quite yet. Not tonight. Or tomorrow. She wants a moment to savor this. The three of them, with nothing to do and everything ahead.

Her fingers trace along the wall as she walks back out the boys in the kitchen. Eliot’s put Alec to work, stirring a pot on the stove and the sight of the two of them thrills her in exactly the same way the ledge of a skyscraper does, beckoning into the beyond. They glance up at her in unison. 

“Let’s not choose just yet,” she says. “We deserve some time off.”


	2. Chapter 2

He wakes briefly, first when Eliot rises, carefully redistributing the limbs Hardison’s draped over him throughout the night, then when Parker, a sleepy sometime later, plants a fly-by kiss on his temple before she follows Eliot. He should get up too, experiment with consciousness in these early morning hours, but he’s got a good hypothesis of what the results will be, so he drowses instead, relishing the ability to stretch fully and not reach the sides of the bed.

That was a welcome surprise, actually; Eliot doesn’t seem like the type to go for a california king. But then, he’s definitely not the type to have boxes of cereal so sweet it makes Hardison’s teeth ache looking at it, and, on the shelf below it, several two liters of his orange soda, the bottles unopened and slightly dusty. 

It’s the dust that gets Hardison, not because it makes him sneeze, which it also does, but because it means they’ve been there. For a while. Waiting. 

He drifts, exploring that information in conjunction with the fact of the bed, for another hour or so before extricating himself to go find his partners.

They’re not inside, or it appears, in the backyard, shaded by huge trees and mostly taken up by a workshed and a greenhouse. Instead he finds them both out in the front yard, though now that he’s looking at it in daylight for the first time, it looks nothing like a front yard at all. There’s no grass for one thing, unlike all the other perfect green squares fronting the neighboring houses. The entire area is covered in plants, with narrow stone pathways that Parker’s currently hop-skipping through, as Eliot kneels in one of the beds, weeding. 

Last night, and the time he’d come before, waited in Lucille, engine idling, for Eliot to fumble at the lock and get safely inside, it had been dark, and Hardison hadn’t quite registered the details of Eliot’s non-lawn. Now, in the morning sun, it stands out in stark contrast to the other, neatly manicured plots on the quiet street. 

“You’re up!” Parker calls, neatly leaping a bed full of...large leafy...leaves. They were kinda pretty with orange center stalks surrounded by wide dark green, but he couldn’t have put a name to them if he’d tried. She arrives at his side, barely breathless and without damaging a single one of Eliot’s carefully tended plants. “Welcome to the Crime Garden!”

Hardison has some definite questions about that name, but before he could ask them, an older white woman walking a small dog called out from the sidewalk. “Ellis, son, when did you get back into town? Take a look at the black vernissage when you have a chance—some yellowing in the leaves, but nothing serious. I’m thinking nitrogen deficiency. Oh—and that Cindy Tyler was snooping, as you know she likes to. Taking pictures with that fancy phone of hers. I had Delilah do her business right in front of her, so she left in a hurry then, I’ll tell you!” 

Eliot stands and stretches as she’s talking, making his way down the winding pathways to her. “Thank you for keepin’ an eye on things, Margery, I’m much obliged.”

“Oh, he’s goin’ full on the country boy charm with her, ain’t he,” Hardison mutters to Parker on the porch, suddenly glad he’s pulled on a t-shirt in addition to the pajama bottoms he’s rocking. They were here to lie low, no need to get the whole neighborhood talking at once. And he hasn’t missed the way Margery’s eyes catch sight of them on the porch. He has missed whatever a “black vernissage” is though. Maybe it’s time to secretly research another of Eliot’s interests.

“You’ve taken good care of it while I’ve been away,” Eliot’s saying, posture easy and natural. It’s not an act. Hardison’s seen Eliot play the part enough to know when he’s faking, and he relaxes a little, surprised at his own wariness. _I’m the friendly one, dammit!_

Parker slides an arm around his waist, leaning her head on his shoulder. “That’s his neighbor. Margery Wilson. She lives in the house to the left and Delilah likes peanut butter. Fixed income, old pictures of a son in the hall, and lots of little plants on her kitchen windowsill.”

“Parker, babe, what were you doin’ in her kitchen?”

“Scouting the neighborhood. Just in case. Don’t tell Eliot,” she whispers.

Down on the street, Eliot gestures to them, saying something about friends who’ll be staying with him for a while. _Friends._ Hardison waves a hand in a friendly, non-committal sort of way, uncomfortable with the fact that he’s uncomfortable. Eliot’s got a house and a cover and has made connections with his neighbor. That’s all. The fact that it’s a whole separate life that he’s had nothing to do with until now is...that’s just how Eliot is. Parker too. They compartmentalize. 

_You do not get to be jealous of an old white lady and her dog_. Eliot’s petting the dog now, a small fluffy white thing that isn’t at all Eliot’s type of dog, except for the fact that it is a dog, and therefore Eliot’s type.

A moment later, they’ve said their goodbyes, and she’s promised to be back by later in the afternoon, to pick up some chard, whatever _chard_ is. 

Eliot returns to them, striding through the riot of growth around him as easily as he moves through a fight. “Want some breakfast, now that you’re finally up?” he asks Hardison, and the full on fucking normalcy of Eliot’s life here engulfs him. Sure, the guy’d said he’d be the best of them at a normal life, but it’s one thing to hear Eliot say it on the comms while he and Sophie are out trying to appear suspicious (not hard) and to see it in action, the way it sits easy on Eliot’s shoulders.

“Yeah, sounds good,” Hardison manages, “ _Ellis_.”

“Sounds like we do need to plan. A little,” Parker remarks.

Eliot lifts and settles his shoulders, accepting the additional weight as his due. “Pancakes?”

Okay, so he’s a bit surprised it’s Hardison who’s a bit on edge, rather than Parker, though Eliot suspects that’s only because Parker broke into Margery’s house this morning when she thought he was preoccupied trimming back the young apple tree in the southeast corner. 

Hardison’s definitely not Parker, but Eliot, for all his grumbling to the contrary, gets Parker, can anticipate what she’ll do and what he needs to mind. Hardison should fit in here better, he’s always the one aggressively making wherever they land home, after all, so Eliot has to assume it’s _him_ that’s making Hardison uneasy. Dammit. 

And sure, maybe he should have mentioned his identity here last night over dinner, briefed them on the neighborhood and what to expect, but Parker’d come out declaring time off and Eliot had—selfishly—wanted it to just be the three of them. Existing in his space, like he’d been imagining for some time now, making just enough concessions to the idea to keep it patiently simmering on a back burner until the time was right. If it ever was. _Shoulda introduced them to Margery at least, but since we haven’t discussed names..._

Maybe he should have just agreed to the hotel. Hardison had been the one most insistent on the five of them becoming a family, had been the one, by hook and by crook, who kept them together in space, and therefore in time. 

Sometimes, Eliot forgets how young Hardison is, even when the guy makes it hard to ignore. Sure, he can be cocky and incredibly annoying, but it also makes changes like this tough. Eliot’s walked away from enough families to know that’s not what they’re doing right now, but Hardison hasn’t. The guy still calls his Nana every Sunday. Maybe he needs the responsibility of providing their homebase to keep him grounded. Maybe Eliot’s overstepping, dragging them out here.

The first pancake comes out burnt, but that’s to be expected. 

_Or that’s all this is. The first pancake._

He hates these circular thoughts with no specific beginning or end point. Instead, he turns to check Hardison’s progress on the strawberry compote, finds him with the spoon motionless in the pot, the syrupy liquid just starting to burn from its minder’s inattention. 

“Watch it!” Eliot warns, too harsh, by the way Hardison startles, coming back from wherever his brain had been. _Maybe I’m not the only one with thoughts spinning like tires in gravel._

Hardison makes a face at Eliot, a _yeah, yeah, I got it_ eyeroll. “You got a last name we should know?” he asks, voice sharpened to a point by the sandpaper in Eliot’s tone.

Parker’s eyes flick up. Eliot had set her to whipping cream, because she’d already pulled the whisk from the utensil jar on the counter, swatting both him and Hardison on the ass with it whenever they turned around. Now the whisk keeps moving, with no sign of slowing, long after even Eliot’s forearms would’ve been screaming for a break. “Do _we_ have names?” she asks, intrigued.

“Prob’ly for the best, if we plan on stickin’ around here for a bit.” He flips the current pancake off the skillet just before it darkens into bitterness. “We don’t have to.” Careful pour of batter. By the time this one’s done, the whip cream’ll likely be set into firm peaks, the compote thickened, and he’ll set the table while Parker and Hardison try out their pancake art skills with the last of the batter. “Jenkins,” he remembers to tell Hardison. “Ellis Jenkins. Folks here think I travel for work. Construction somethin’ or other.” It’s an old ID, not one Hardison created for him, but he’s kept up enough of the paperwork and appearances to make it soft and well-worn. 

“Are _folks round here_ gonna be comfortable with us turnin’ up?” Hardison asks carefully, so carefully that Eliot’s tempted to goad him into saying it direct: _What kinda white, middle class, picket fence suburb you set up in? The conservative racist kind where I shouldn’t be kissin’ you on the front porch? Or the neoliberal gentrified kind where they’ll all just talk about how it’s “sweet” behind their hands, usin’ us as proof of their own open-mindedness, while still crossin’ to the other side of the street if I go out for a walk?_

It’s a good question. Likely a mix of the two, with some middle of the road types who just didn’t give a damn. “No trouble we can’t handle,” Eliot says, which is as much of an answer as he’s got. He’s not expecting torches and pitchforks, but he also can’t deny Hardison could draw attention and suspicions he doesn’t deserve, and it’s a factor he needs to consider, if he’s to keep them safe. Which he is. No question. “They ain’t the confrontational type.” He’s certain about that at least.

Hardison softens, turning off the heat under the compote and stepping in close behind him, to drape his arms over Eliot’s shoulders. The warm weight of him rests comfortably there. “I’ll go through the IDs we brought with us, choose some good matchin’ ones to ‘Ellis’. Let the neighbors mind their business and we’ll mind ours.”

Parker watches them, her nose wrinkling. “One of your four arms should flip that,” she says practically, pointing to the slightly smoking pancake.

It’s definitely past the point of bitterness, but he’ll see it goes on his plate, smothered in compote and cream.

“So,” Hardison says after they’ve sat down to breakfast, and Parker’s busy making her pancake self portrait bleed strawberry compote from her eyes, mouth, and ears, “what the hell’s a crime garden?” 

She grins, even wider than when Eliot first told her, peering at him through a wall of purple runner beans. _Velour filet beans_ he’d called them, and the name had sounded far too grand for a bean, even a purple one. Like the Mona Lisa. Portable yes, and Parker did like the secret in her smile, but too small and ordinary, given her name and reputation. 

Eliot chews and swallows his bite before answering, off-hand, “Oh, the HOA here don’t allow food gardens, as part of the CC n’ Rs.”

Parker’s not sure, from the wave of expressions that crest and break over Hardison’s face, which word in that sentence tumbles him head over heels. Maybe it’s the whole combination, or the way Eliot shrugs, unconcerned enough that she can tell he’s secretly pleased, both at his small rebellion, and at Hardison’s obvious confusion.

“You grow your own food.” Hardison’s voice is a plain fact. Eliot had told them that ages ago, back in Boston, and they’d all thought he was maybe sort of kidding, until Parker’d stalked him the extensive community garden plot he rented, since he didn’t have room in his apartment for more than a few pots and hydroponics tubs.

“Yup.” Eliot says, and takes another bite of pancake. A trail of the compote escapes down his chin. 

Parker, jaw tight, stabs her own pancake face with her fork, right between the eyes, as Eliot catches the stray drop of red. The strawberries were from the front _gard-yard_ , as she’s certain Hardison will christen it. (Or maybe _yarden_?) Eliot had asked her to pick them, selecting only the ones bright as rubies. Or blood.

“My point man, is why the hell would you buy a house in an HOA that gets pissy about you growing food, if a specific requirement of your living space is _growin’ food_??”

Eliot shrugs, not engaging, though by not engaging, he is _absolutely_ engaging, riling Hardison by staying calm. “Guess I had different _parameters_.”

“Such as!?” Hardison demands, then frowns as Eliot’s _distinctive_ word choice registers, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. “You can set that as a filter, man. On any real estate site. No HOA. Plain and simple as that. See, like most search-heavy websites they operate on a combination of natural language search keywords and a facet map system to eliminate and supply a set of predictable…”

Pancake her tastes delicious. Parker digs into her pile, as Eliot, done with his own, shoves his plate away, before cutting off Hardison’s still ongoing explanation. “I knew. That’s why I chose it.”

“ _Intentionally?_ ”

Eliot shrugs again, still casual, and Parker wishes she knew if it was an act or not. He’d had strong, _loud_ feelings about moving to Portland and Hardison’s Brewpub, for all that he’d spent the next year and some pouring his energy into the place, only to be the one nudging them out the door. Bringing them here, where he’s rooted so many things in the ground. She doesn’t root, she hoards; stashes like a squirrel bracing for winter, but maybe those two things are not so different. She remembers hearing somewhere that’s how some forests grow; from hoarded nuts sprouting roots. She’s kept these boys for a long time in one way or another. Maybe that's why they’ve grown roots.

“I met Margery,” Eliot says finally, as if that’s an explanation. It isn’t, by the face Hardison makes, and Parker’s in agreement, so she asks, bluntly: “What’s so special about that old lady?”

What’s so special about that old lady is...nothing, she learns as Eliot finally explains. 

He’d met her right after they learned they’d be staying in Portland for the time being, her car broken down on the side of the road in the rain. Eliot had pulled over to help, got it started, and followed her home, to make sure it didn’t die again. She’d offered him dinner and he’d helped make it, and they’d talked about gardening.

Margery was a retired horticulturist and a widow. She’d lost her husband to cancer and her son and his wife to a car accident a few years back. The cancer’d wiped out their savings, but her son’s unexpected death left her instead with this house and enough of a life insurance policy to pay the mortgage. Her son and his wife had bought it to start a family, but now it was just her and her dog, in a too-large house, in a community that forbid gardens, the one thing she’d dreamed of spending her retirement doing. And then Eliot discovered that the house next door was up for sale at auction. So he’d bought it, cash down, and told Margery to do whatever she wanted with the front yard, he’d pay for it and deal with the HOA too. 

“Damn, man,” Hardison says, when Eliot finishes. 

Eliot shrugs yet again. “They fine me, I pay ‘em. They come by makin’ remarks, takin’ pictures, lurkin’, and threatenin’. It’s cute, what they think a ‘threat’ is.” 

She grins at that, but Hardison doesn’t. His frown is back. “They take it further yet? Cause they prob’ly will. If they want, they can try to take your house.”

“How?” Parker asks, suddenly, uncomfortably aware how out of her depth she is. It sounds like theft, but a type she knows nothing about. _And I’m the mastermind now. Nate would know this. He knows about normal people things like mortgages and HOAs and what was that other abbreviation? Oh right, CC and Rs._ “What is an HOA? And the CC thing.”

“A Home-owners Association,” Hardison falls easily into briefing mode, “is a board of people that live in a community and dictate the rules about what your house can look like, paint colors, types of trim, landscaping etcetera. They also maintain common areas like parks and they collect dues from every person who lives in that neighborhood. They’re s’pposed to keep home values up, but in reality it’s often a way of makin’ sure the ‘right’ people move into a neighborhood and pricin’ everyone else out.”

Parker wants to run a con on them already. She leans in. “And the CCs?” Maybe just a little job. As a treat.

“Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions,” Eliot says, then gestures at Hardison, yielding the floor to let him continue.

“Those’re the written rules layin’ down what is and is not okay, to make sure everyone stays on the same page.”

“Like laws,” Parker says. She has no use for laws, apart from something to break, and avoid getting caught. But she does have lots of rules, though sometimes she makes amendments. Eliot has lots of rules too, but their being here is an amendment. Eliot being with them is a _big_ amendment. Sometimes she wishes she could see Eliot’s rules, to know which ones she wants to break and which ones she doesn’t. Like Eliot and his garden for Margery. 

“Depends on who’s makin’ the rules and what they’ll do to enforce them. HOAs can put a lien on your house, and claim it outright, if you don’t pay the dues and the fines,” Hardison stares directly at Eliot, who seems unconcerned.

“I do, so they can keep complainin’ all they want.”

Eliot himself is always complaining about how Hardison spends money, despite having plenty to burn, and Parker can see Hardison dying to point out that hypocrisy, but he doesn’t and she’s glad. Still…

“I don’t like the idea of people taking pictures, of the attention this kind of fight could draw when we want to lay low,” she says. When Eliot wasn’t staying here much, when he was at the Brewpub with them, that was different. “With all three of us here…” she doesn’t mean to trail off, but the look on Eliot’s face reminds her of the weeds he’d been pulling earlier, uprooted and wilting. There’s probably a better plant metaphor about what she’s actually doing, which isn’t really a con on her crew. Just...poking. 

“An’ you know, even with the three of us mindin’ our own business, the people you pissin’ off only gonna talk more, find more things wrong, an’ figure out a reason to get us into court,” Hardison adds. He’s chasing a strawberry around his plate, and by the time he looks up, Eliot’s face is set again. “Not that we can’t beat ‘em in court, I make a fine-ass lawyer if I do say so myself, but—”

“Fine. Where you movin’ us this time?” Eliot snaps. “Florida?” 

Hardison stiffens. “That ain’t what I meant.”

Roots. This is about roots. She’d killed her first plant, when they’d set up the LA offices. It hadn’t even had a chance to die an exciting death, immolating in the explosion. No, it had wilted and gotten sick, so she’d stashed it in the closet, since she liked dark, small spaces when she wasn’t feeling good. Apparently, plants don’t. At some point, while not quite coping to plant-slaughter, she’d asked Eliot why plants died, since he seemed to like dirt. Apparently, there are lots of things that kill a plant, too many for her to diagnose, and by that point, she’d _needed_ to know, so she showed him, explaining it hadn’t been happy with water and sunshine outside the closet, so being inside the closet definitely didn’t kill it. _Sure didn’t help_ , Eliot had muttered, but he’d pulled it out of its pot, showed her the tight ball of tangled white roots, like improperly stored rope. _Needed more room t’ grow._

“We’re not ready to transplant yet.” Both of her boys stop glaring at each other to turn and face her, which is exactly what she’d intended, Eliot raising an eyebrow at her word choice. “We need time to decide on our next move, on how to tackle the Black Book, and who to recruit.”

She’s been careful with her new plant, the venus fly trap she’d guessed was Eliot’s doing, even before Hardison confessed he’d had no idea what to feed a venus flytrap, but he’d done a lot of research and the answer was flies, not mice, and to please- _please_ - _PLEASE_ not try to feed it mice in front of him. That was okay, she has lots of other uses for mice. Eliot helped her re-pot it sometime after they moved to Portland, to give the roots more room. He’d shaken the ball of roots to loosen them, get them ready to spread in new soil.

_And that’s what we’re about to do. Give our roots more room. But first we have to shake some things loose._

“Right.” Hardison agrees to her out-loud words, when Eliot doesn’t say anything. “We need time for us too.” It’s sappy, but Hardison can get away with sappy. He reaches over and captures Eliot’s hand from his lap, which makes Eliot’s expression do that twitchy thing when he’s both annoyed at Hardison and secretly pleased, but he doesn’t want to admit it. Under the table, Hardison’s fingers catch her’s as well. 

“So what’s the plan?” Eliot asks finally. He and Hardison watch her, hungry and eager and already knowing what she’s going to say.

Parker grins. “Let’s go steal an HOA!”


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing Hardison does once they finish breakfast, is go next door to introduce himself and invite Margery to dinner that night, so they can kinda-sorta explain what they’re up to. Margery, they’ve decided, just to make this more like a _job_ -job, is their client.

Actually, no, technically the first thing he does is raid their ID stash for identities for him and Parker and the second thing he does is participate in a threeway. 

Argument, that is, which isn’t nearly as fun as the other kind. The threeway fight only stays below a certain decibel range because none of them want the neighbors to hear it. 

“DAMMIT HARDISON, DON’T BE AN IDIOT, YOU AND PARKER ARE THE COUPLE.” 

“DAMMIT YOURSELF, I AIN’T THE IDIOT HERE AND I AM DATIN’ _YOU_.”

“ALL OR NOTHING!” Okay, so maybe Parker, against all odds the sensible and level-headed one here, hadn’t shouted her contribution with quite as much enthusiasm, but it’s her that shuts them both up. 

“Babe,” he begins, but she shakes her head, ponytail flicking back and forth. 

“We leave them guessing. It’s not a big deal.”

“This kinda neighborhood, they’ll be talkin’ up a storm if we don’t make it clear what the relationship is,” Eliot points out, pointedly, with a pointed finger at Hardison. “And that relationship is you two.”

Hardison bats away his finger, unimpressed and irritated. Trust El to come up with the version where he’s the self-sacrificing third wheel _again_. 

“It’s only where they can see,” Eliot tries again, but even though Hardison’s not too sure of Parker’s idea, at least it makes them a unified front in the fact that at least one of them will be dating Eliot. 

“It’s not a big deal,” Parker repeats, as both he and Eliot raise their eyebrows doubtfully. “Look, we want them talking about us and guessing and coming over when invited so we can meet, make nice, and steal all their personal data from their phones. Why scope out boring people? We want them to know we’re _not_ boring.”

Eliot casts a glance over at Hardison, which he chooses to read as, _maybe she’s got a point._ And look, it’s not that he’s opposed to the idea of leaving everything ambiguous, there’s a certain fun to that, like he used to taunt Eliot, when he realized Eliot was in fact into him and being too stubborn for words about admitting it. Hell, he’s a _master_ at getting that red rising into Eliot’s cheeks. But both of his people had to be coaxed into a relationship in the first place. Ain’t no way he’s letting some uptight suburbians with torches and pitchforks come for them.

 _Right, like either Parker or Eliot would stand for that, now that we’re established. They fight for what’s theirs. Me. I’m theirs._ The thought sends warmth flooding through his chest. “Okay, Parker’s way it is.”

She grinned, gleeful to have won the debate and bounces over to sling her arms around both of them. “Hardison, we need to go introduce ourselves to Margery, Eliot—”

“I got a pergola to build and an HOA board t’ piss off,” he finishes for her, and turns so they’re in a tight triangle, facing in. “Whatever is said out there, this right here? This is what we are.”

He’d bought the house at auction, for far less than it should’ve been priced at, particularly once he’d had a proper look at the lot’s layout and square footage. It’s a corner lot, with Margery’s house on one side, and a substantial, but irregular triangle of space on the other. Not large enough to fit another house, but separated from the actual backyard of his house by a natural boundary of trees. Eliot has scratched his head over the choice to make that space part of this lot to begin with, but kept up the maintenance of it regardless. Originally, he’d considered sticking the garden there, but it’s out of the surveillance range of his cameras, and further for Margery to go. 

Not to mention, he rather enjoys fucking with the board, fines be damned. If he’d put in the garden off in this irregular area, they might be brave enough to destroy it. Out front, everyone can see it, see him or Margery at work. He’s lost track of the number of boxes they’ve set out of vegetables and fruits up for the taking. The number of compliments their work has received. 

Now, he finally has a use for that strange side area, and a project to keep his hands and brain, suddenly sliced off from the needs of the Brewpub, occupied. 

It takes him the better part of a week to build the pergola, including the time he sets aside to grumble at the huge-ass grill Hardison buys to install as part of the longer bar making up one side. It’s loud, sweaty work that’s definitely against the CC&Rs, and he loves every spiteful minute of it. 

Margery clucks her tongue when he tells her that first evening he’s gonna take the board head on. “You looking for a new war to fight?” 

She’d asked him that soon after he’d moved in next door, and she’d found him pulling weeds at 3 a.m., because his hands had needed to be doing and his brain had needed to _not_ be thinking. _You’re looking for a war to fight, aren’t you, son? I know that look._ Her husband had been in ‘Nam, she’d told him then. 

“Nah,” Eliot tells her now, “but I might be movin’ soon, an’ you need a garden.”

“I could stick it inside, all in pots!” she laughs, but then sombers. “I don’t really need a garden, Ellis.”

“Everyone needs a garden,” he says. He doesn’t mean an actual garden, though Margery’s is, and he supposes his is too, after a kitchen. He’d argue everyone needs a kitchen too, but Hardison and Parker don’t, at least not for the reasons he does. Hardison needs his games, and Parker—she needs the wind in her hair and them standing at her back.

“Yes, I suppose they do,” Margery agrees. “But that doesn’t mean you need to go to war for me.”

Eliot’s not sure how to explain that she’s the type of person he’s always trying to go to war for. That too many times his intentions in that direction have been hijacked, misused. That he’s been going to war in similar ways for over half a decade and it suits him just fine, so he’ll keep doing it until something gives out, or one of two someones tells him to stand down. Sure, he could retire, live in a suburb like this. He wasn’t lying when he told Sophie that. But he’s always been selfish enough to survive and now he’s selfish enough to taste a little more than survival. “It’s my honor,” he says finally. 

And it is. He grins broadly when Cindy comes by, badly pretending to be texting when she’s actually taking pictures. “Not subtle at all, see her comin’ a mile away!” he laughs to Hardison and Parker at dinner that night and they take turns exaggerating the tells people unused to clandestine surveillance fall prey to, cackling with laughter at Hardison’s hesitant fingers, the faces Parker pulls. 

Several other board members come through— _trespassing_ says the territorial part of his brain that doesn’t care this is going according to plan—to tell him he needs to stop building this immediately, he doesn’t have board approval, he’ll be fined. “Hold that end for me for a sec, would’ya?” he says in response, Brian Danser’s hands already full of two by four. Brian’s not a bad sort, he’s come by to tell Eliot consequences before, but always looks awkward and unhappy about it, like he’s been voted down and made to toe the line by being the bearer of bad news. Eliot, in turn, always takes a perverse pleasure in getting him to help without him realizing it. He helped Eliot set four trellises for beans once before it clicked what he’d been conned into doing. 

Being manipulated by Sophie sometimes has its benefits, though he’s never going to tell her that.

Most of the time, Hardison or Parker or both is out there helping him, and one of them will turn up when someone does, to offer a beverage, or a snack, and introduce themselves. Hardison’s always all charm and smiles like he’s born to it, but a surreal pride always simmers inside Eliot, seeing Parker on the con in his backyard. Making small talk and an industry standard amount of eye contact. He loves watching her turn it off and on, making a face behind someone’s back as they ask careful questions. _“I’ve been wanting my husband to build something exactly like this, but we could never get it past the HOA, how did you…?”_

He makes jokes about asking forgiveness, rather than permission, which is a bit rich coming from someone like him, with someone like Parker sneaking her hand through their visitor’s purse, while subtly sniffing her hair. After she’s gone, Parker pops one of the mints she stole into her mouth, offers the other one to him. “Never been a big fan of asking for forgiveness _or_ permission,” she says leaning next to him against the newly set brick wall of the bar and grill. Another kitchen, of sorts, right out in the open. 

So many things, out in the open. 

“Me neither,” Eliot agrees, as Hardison emerges, loosely holding three bottles of beer. It’s got an unusual, familiar flavor. He raises both eyebrows in a question.

“We were careful!” Hardison protests. “But I couldn’t leave _all_ of the Thief Juice behind, man!”

“Still a mouth crime,” Eliot mutters, and takes another swig. Thing is, it’s grown on him.

“Hardison, run it,” she’d said that first afternoon, after pancakes for breakfast, and each other for lunch. Before Margery for dinner— _but not like that—_ Parker course corrects mentally, her nose wrinkling.

Hardison and Eliot don’t remark on her faces, though Eliot keeps an eye on her as Hardison gallops through the briefing. He used to do the same with Nate, a subtle watchfulness that’s not quite casual, but only a challenge when he deems it necessary. Nate didn’t always appreciate that guardrail, but it’s one of the few she respects, trusts to keep Hardison safe. Now, she acknowledges his glance with her Eliot-specific smile: lips pressed thin and pragmatic, eyes bright. It’s not the same smile she seems to automatically generate around Hardison. She used to summon them in the mirror when she’d practiced schooling her face on Sophie’s suggestion, when she’d realized Hardison wasn’t the only person she felt like smiling about.

Hardison clears his throat and rolls his eyes at both of them, grumbling about making cow eyes before picking up where he left off.

The Mark: Lincoln Cummings, the president of the HOA. Cindy Tyler, the one who keeps taking not-quite surreptitious pictures on her phone, is his treasurer and sister-in-law. Lincoln owns a contracting company, and Cindy’s an accountant, so when Hardison pulls up the bank records documenting just how much they’ve been embezzling off the dues and fines they’ve been levying on everyone in the neighborhood, it’s relatively anticlimactic. _We’ll have bigger fish to fry, soon enough._

She intends to let Hardison finish, but Eliot, impatient, jumps in. “We basically figured all this. What’s our in?”

Hardison spreads his hands in a shrug. “Dude likes bossin’ people around. He likes power, an’ people havin’ to do what he says.”

 _What would Nate do?_ Parker weighs the question carefully. Nate liked to give people what they wanted. Give them enough rope to climb, and then tie the knot they would hang themselves with. They could do that here. But it might be tricky, with them all living in the neighborhood, and Eliot already a familiar face. They’re playing with a short hand right now, and they all have to be visible.

“Right, so we ignore him,” she announces. “He won’t like that at _all_.”

“You ain’t wrong, but how’s he gonna trip an’ fall in a pit of his own making if we don’t give him a little shove?”

“In San Lorenzo,” Parker starts, carefully ignoring the way Eliot straightens at the name, “we flipped an election.”

“We _rigged_ an election,” Hardison reminds her, but he’s already catching on. “Ohhhh, so _we_ ain’t the ones givin’ the push. We make nice with everyone else, maybe host a few get togethers now that the weather’s nice and warm, an’ nudge them forward.”

Eliot grins like full sunshine in cloudy Portland. “So, we’re liberating a region from an oppressive regime… with barbecue?”

“An’ some tech support,” Hardison can’t help but add, waving his phone.

“And a little bit of leverage,” Parker finishes.

It’s the leverage aspect she works on over the next week, as Eliot’s building the grill and pergola in the empty space on the other side of his house, and Hardison’s hacking into every under-protected wifi network in the neighborhood, which is all of them. Parker idly wonders if they’re under-protected or Hardison’s over-powered as she presses a strong magnet to the side of an expensive-looking, but utterly useless keypad door lock. It clicks open, and she dismisses the thought, replacing it with the much more real concern of them going soft, staying in this… wait there’s a term for it, something that makes no sense. It’s food related, so Eliot will know.

“Hey, what’s the liquid sweet place?” she whispers into the comms. From the living room comes the high-pitched tipsy laughter of women meeting for a book club.

“The what now?” Hardison asks, words punctuated with the staccato of typing.

“You know, where everything’s easy.”

“Land of milk n’ honey,” Eliot grunts, sounding like he’s in the process of lifting something heavy. “An’ speak for yourself.”

“You have power tools,” Parker sniffs. “You love power tools.” Eliot doesn’t bother argue that truth and Hardison’s busy typing, so she’s on her own as she slips silently past the kitchen and into the front hall. If she hugs the far wall, there’s no direct line of sight, they’d tested it on Eliot’s identical floorplan. Milk and honey indeed. 

It’s easy enough, planting a few of the ugly old pewter figures she’d swiped from the glass cabinet down the hall into Cindy’s purse, so they’ll be just visible when all the women come to pick up their things on their way out the door. Not to get her arrested or anything. Just to stir up suspicion, make the other women mutter about her behind her back.

That’s as easy as Hardison changing a number of single-recipient replies into reply-alls in Lincoln’s emails to various board members, sending up a furious flurry of questions and private emails, and texts between other board members as they see Lincoln’s dealings come to light.

It’s as easy as Eliot commenting with one of those open, rueful ‘Ellis’ smiles of his that the board will probably end up tearing his new pergola down, but maybe the fight’ll last the summer at least and they can get some grilling and potlucks in while the weather’s good. 

By the end of the week, there’s accusations flying, factions forming, and a cease and desist letter in their mailbox. Hardison monitors the first two on the neighborhood group app, and Lincoln Cummings turns up the next day to make sure they’ve received the third. 

They’re all outside, Parker unintentionally hidden up a tree tying the ropes for a tire swing, among other activities, so she sees him coming first.

“Cumming’s coming,” she chants, but not enough for him to hear. Hardison lets out a quick giggle, then turns back to his phone. They want him irritated and Hardison’s _much_ better at the subtle filming than Cindy Tyler. They may not use any of the footage, but it’s nice to have it. 

“Ellis, just wanted to stop by for a quick chat. And I don’t think I’ve met your...friend.” Cummings says, the pause before the last word full of judgement. Hardison, lounging against one of the pergola’s pillars, flicks his eyes up, then back down to his phone, uninterested. Parker decides to stay quiet and hidden, up in her tree.

“Well, I am sorry ‘bout that, Lincoln, just we’ve been a bit busy lately, as y’ can see. Don’t she look fine?” Eliot pats the cedar structure proudly.

“It’s not the craftsmanship that concerns me, Ellis, it’s the fact that you didn’t get this cleared, and I can tell you right now that it won’t be! First that eyesore of a yard out front and now this? There are consequences to violating the CC&Rs, Mr. Jenkins.”

Eliot offers up that rueful smile with a small shrug on the side. “Ah, well, I figure I pay you for the privilege of my garden, so I figured I’d be payin’ you for the privilege of this pergola too.”

“It’s not a privilege, it’s a punishment, you ignorant hick!”

Hardison straightens, stepping away from the pillar. “I’m gonna need you to be civil when talking to my friend here,” he says, voice deep and smooth with threat. It sends a tingle down into Parker’s toes. 

“And you are?”

“That isn’t your concern. None of this should be your concern. You could have much...larger concerns than these paltry violations of your petty rules, Mr. Cummings.”

From the red flush Parker can see crawling Eliot’s neck, he’s enjoying this performance of Hardison’s as much as she is. 

“You ever drive over th’ speed limit, Mr. Cummin’s? Eliot asks, his voice a soft counterpoint to Hardison’s. “An’ sometimes y’ get pulled over, an’ fined, an’ _—_ ”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Cummings interrupts, though he keeps a wary eye on Hardison as he does. “What’s your point?”

“You grumble, pay th’ fine, and tomorrow you’ll find your foot pressin’ that pedal down again. You _want_ t’ drive a certain speed, so you pay a price t’ do it.”

Cummings opens his mouth, but Eliot continues as if he hasn’t noticed.

“I want a garden an’ a place for the neighborhood t’ come together. Now, I remember you promisin’ at the one board meetin’ I attended, ‘fore I realized they ain’t really my speed, that you were lookin’ at plans for a small park area, but it’s real cheap to make those little digital mock-ups and it’s real easy to leave it at that. I never much cared for cheap or easy, an’ I happen to own this little stretch right here,” he gestures at the grassy space surrounding the pergola, “so I figured I might as well put it to good use. Now, if you’ll just tell me how much I should be expectin’ to pay for the privilege, you can be about your business, an’ I’ll be about mine.”

“More than you bargained for, Mr. Jenkins,” Lincoln Cummings snarls, the concept of being civil forgotten as easily as the speed limit. “More than you can afford.” He stalks off, as Eliot and Hardison raise their eyebrows at each other, waiting a beat before they burst out laughing. 

“I very much doubt that,” Eliot says, still in that soft, slightly exaggerated version of his country drawl. It starts Hardison going all over again, as Parker drops down from her perch in the tree and joins them. 

“Hook has been set,” she says, because someone should, and Eliot’s too busy pulling Hardison’s grinning face down for a kiss.


	4. Chapter 4

“Evenin’ Miss Margery,” Hardison says, when he finds her kneeling in one of the beds out front, frowning at the underside of a leaf. He’s pretty sure it’s a tomato. 

Margery starts, blinking rapidly as her readers fall off her nose to the end of their chain. “Oh! I hope I’m not disturbing you! Up till now it’s just been Ellis, and he’s gone most of the time, so I’ve started taking all the liberties he keeps telling me to take.”

“Nah, you’re fine,” he grins to show he means it. “I don’t know nuthin’ about all this. It’s more El’s thing than mine. Never been that comfortable with dirt.”

“Oh, my husband was the same way,” Margery agrees, indicating she might have a slightly more accurate read on their relationship than Hardison anticipated. Few people have said anything though, about the three of them living together. It’s been a refreshing surprise. “He’d just help with the heavy lifting, then leave the rest up to me. Ellis sees to that now, and so much more. Not quite what I expected when he first pulled up in that orange monstrosity of his.”

“I know the feelin’. Though, plenty of people might’ve been creeped out, guy like him drivin’ them home, then decidin’ to move next door.”

“I suppose you’re right, but he’s a gentle one, he is. Don’t mean any harm to anyone.” 

This, Hardison feels, is both wildly inaccurate and somehow closer to the truth of Eliot Spencer than most people get. 

“Besides, he got that house for a steal, and I got the best neighbor I could hope for.” She sighs, sitting back on her heels. “I hope you three know what you’re doing. Lincoln Cummings is… well I don’t like to call people names, but Lincoln Cummings is a bully, and that’s a fact. He ran out the Kims, just for missing a few dues payments. Stuck a lien on that house, claimed it under the Association’s bylaws, or some legal nonsense, and sold it at auction for a fraction of its worth. I don’t know if Ellis knows the whole of that. I didn’t want him feeling guilty, when it wasn’t his fault.”

Hardison’s not entirely sure Eliot knows it either, since he’d gotten all impatient and interrupted the briefing before Hardison had reached that particular tidbit. Or maybe Eliot does know. And feels guilty about it. Maybe he’d interrupted because he didn't want Parker asking if he’d known. 

“I worry about him, is all,” Margery says, when Hardison is silent, mulling over the possibility. 

He almost tells her she doesn’t need to worry about him, or that Eliot doesn’t want her worrying about him, but while both are true, Hardison’s of the firm belief that Eliot deserves a few more people worrying, or just plain caring, about him. He’s spent the last few years doing more than a little thinking on the subject, while trying to navigate the complexities of Eliot’s pride and his own desire to reel him in as close as he’ll come. Unlike most of the tidbits about his life that Eliot casually drops with the understanding that none of them will pick them up, they’re here, living in this one. 

_This is why he makes fun of my games. They’re so far removed from the dirt._

“I’m glad he chose to live next to you,” Hardison says, finally, mentally adding a few requirements to his ongoing carousel of options for their future elsewhere.

It’s a good night. 

Most of the neighborhood turns up at some point, and most of those who turn up stay, load a plate, grab a chair, or a blanket, or perch on the low rock wall he built around the fire pit. A kid, probably just home from college for the summer, brings a guitar, and because this is Portland, someone else hauls out a ukulele. They actually sound kinda good together.

“You should play,” Parker tells him, leaning in close, eyes sparking in the firelight. He’s been manning the grill all evening, and would’ve been happy to continue, if Brian hadn’t insisted on spelling him for a bit, and neither Ellis nor Eliot can refuse. It isn’t Ellis’ style, and it is part of the plan. 

“I have stage fright, remember?” he tells her, not particularly serious. “And last time, someone filmed and posted it, nearly ruined the con.” 

“You n’ me could tear this place down,” Hardison whispers in his other ear, a quick drive-by, pausing for just long enough to set Parker’s grin alight to match her eyes, and Eliot’s heart to tempo shift into double-time at imagining the two of them taking one of their rollicking jam sessions live to an audience. Then he’s off, turning back to a conversation about brewing, not beer, but _mead_ , of all things. Eliot’s tempted to drag him into the shadows, and give him two significantly different types of tongue-lashings, just for making him imagine the concept of a menu based on mead pairings.

“I’m good,” he tells Parker instead, and means it. “An’ if he’s too busy talkin’ fermentation, we’d better get back to the actual job here.”

“Fomentation?” she shoots a glance up into the tree she’d been perched in a few days before. “It’s handled. Bases covered. Oooh badminton!” 

Sure enough, Alicia Beyer’s kids are hauling one of those portable sets out of a bag and staking in the poles, lopsided. He can see Parker itching to go set it straight.

“Play nice, and call it a ‘birdie’ around the kids, for godsakes,” Eliot pleads as she hurries off. 

“I’d say everyone’s enjoying themselves more than you, Ellis,” Margery laughs, calling from her seat near the fire pit. “Come over here, and make your announcement, now’s as good a time as any.”

It is, particularly with her invitation, and the way the others around the fireplace and pergola perk up and move in, curious. There’s a few from the neighborhood missing, most notably both Cumming’s and Tyler’s families, though he’d been sure to drop a flyer in their mailboxes along with everyone else’s. But there are a number of other members of the Association’s board here, enjoying themselves as if this whole area isn’t some pointed rebellion at the rules they’ve been enforcing. 

“Hi folks,” he begins, finding Hardison and Parker at opposite ends in the crowd, and using them as points to shift his gaze between. “I’m glad you could all come out, have some food and good times on such a nice evening.” There’s murmurs of thanks and a few cheers here and there. He smiles what Parker calls his “Ellis” smile, slightly downcast, and no teeth, a gentle thing. 

“I got lucky. In finding this house, this city, this family.” He searches, sees them again, standing side by side now, just at the outskirts of the light, smiling right back at him. “And I wanted to give somethin’ back. This area is part of my lot, which always seemed a tad strange to me, but sometimes that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. But I don’t particularly need it, any more than I need most of the food growin’ in that garden out front. I ain’t even here all that often, thanks to work. So it’s yours. It’s all up to code, I promise.” He shrugs, hands open and out. 

Now the murmurs are louder, confused, and he has to hold up one of those hands to get the silence back. “Think of it as a community park. A place to gather. I’ll stick up a fence or somethin’ to mark the new boundaries, and now it’s just up to the HOA board, on whether or not they want to vote to change a few of the _many_ CC&Rs I bent and outright broke, or if they’re gonna take it upon themselves to tear this place down.”

Eliot can feel the mood of the crowd shift slightly. He’s shown them something valuable, given it to them, and provided a threat to it, all in the space of a few words. _Not bad, eh Soph?_

“And now, I’ve said my piece,” he says, to finish it off, send that particular shuttlecock flying to their side of the net. “Enjoy the party, I hope it’s the first of many this summer.” 

  
  


There are a few ways Parker has calculated this could go down. She breaks them into _People are Okay_ and _People are Stupid_ categories, because there are few better ways to catalogue the world, in her experience.

People are Okay:

  1. The HOA board votes to keep the park, and while they’re at it, to change the rules about gardens visible from the street.
  2. The HOA board does that _and_ votes Cummings and Tyler out of office for being buttheads. (Also embezzling funds, threatening people, stealing their houses, but she feels ‘buttheads’ sums it up nicely.)
  3. The HOA board refuses to change the rules, and are voted out in a coup. 



People are Stupid:

  1. The HOA board refuses to change the rules, so they have to rig the vote.
  2. The HOA board fines Eliot, places a lien on his house, tries to get him evicted, and Hardison _gleefully_ sics the IRS on anyone who’s had their hand in the dues and fines cookie jar. 
  3. Someone decides to make the problem go away by sabotaging the new park and pergola. They’re caught on film by the gimbal cameras Parker’s placed in every tree surrounding the area and turned over to the police. 



In the end, it’s a mixture, as it so often seems to be, when it comes to people.

The board, led by Cummings, rejects the changes to the Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions, orders the new park area torn down, and fines Eliot. He also claims that Eliot never paid the fines for the garden out front, and forecloses on Eliot’s house, just to cement his doom in Parker’s estimation.

_“Yes, foreclosure is harsh, but that is a way to make an example of the worst offenders. Unless you put up on the flagpole once in a while the real violators, you will have more violators. Find the worst. Foreclose. And then for five years you won’t have anybody that misses a payment.”_

“See,” Parker says when Hardison, cackling loud enough that Eliot sticks his head out of the kitchen to see if he’s choking on something, reads out _that_ section of Cumming’s email to the board. “Buttheads.”

Eliot casually twirls the knife he’s holding end over end in his fingers, unimpressed. “When you postin’ that on the community page?”

“I’m holdin’ off,” Hardison says. “Want to see if someone on the board decides to use the power of the forward button. They old, so most of their emails are chain nonsense anyway. An’ he’s gonna wait ‘til the last minute to notify you about the house, he’ll sell it first at auction like _—_ ”

“Like last time,” Eliot stops twirling the knife. “You wouldn’t happen t’ have found _—_ ”

“Harry Kim and his wife Sonia, along with their two girls are currently living with Sonia’s parents, up in Vancouver,” Hardison says before Eliot can even finish the question. 

“Canada?”

“Washington, jus’ across the river. They’ve been saving up the money for another down payment.”

Eliot nods, like it’s good news, but there are so many things hitched to the good news that making any kind of turn is going to be unpredictable. “I want the house to go to them. Can we make that happen?”

“Yeah,” Hardison says carefully. “We can make that happen.”

Eliot moves back to the kitchen, just in view, and she can hear some sort of chopping start up again. “So what’s our next move?” 

It’s at least two different questions in one, because Eliot’s efficient like that.

“Ha!” Hardison crows, bending forward over his laptop, “Brian’s had enough! Sent it off to sympathetic folks who’ve been sendin’ lots of angry text messages back and forth lately, and I saw most of them talkin’ a bunch at our shindig. He’s got himself a coalition.”

With that the possibilities prune themselves and now she can see the trunk and branches and fruit they bear. A new association, more welcoming and lenient than the previous iteration. All they needed to do was cut away a few strangling vines. “Now that that’s done, tip off authorities on Cumming’s embezzling,” she instructs Hardion. “Did he also steal the money he claims Eliot didn’t pay?”

Hardison grins, gleeful. “Oh, he sure thinks he did. Sent Cindy a text with the info for an account in the Caymans and she dutifully funneled it through, but the text he sent ain’t the text she got, so money’s currently sitting in an LLC I made a while back. I’ll do my thing, run it through the markets, should be a nice chunk of cash in no time.” His fingers drummed across the keyboard, as he looks up at Eliot. “We’re invited to join the rebellion, a.k.a. the new board, by the way. Margery too.”

“Good, give her something to do when she ain’t in the garden.” Eliot glances around the corner at Parker, reminding her of the second question, identical to the first, but not the same at all. She hears him set the knife down, come fully back into the living room.

“I’ve been thinking Chicago,” she suggests, plopping down on the couch next to Hardison, and propping her heels up on their coffee table. “Central, good hub city, plenty of corruption… also tall buildings. Portland doesn’t have enough tall buildings. We’ll build out from there, international offices in London, Hong Kong...” _Spreading roots._

“Mmm, I would like to be based closer to Nana,” Hardison agrees. “El?”

Eliot walks over and gently kicks her legs off their perch before sitting down himself. “You gonna buy some stupid hipster place I’m gonna have t’ rescue?”

In answer, Hardison rummages through the laptop bag beside him and pulls out a folder, passing it to Eliot. Parker already knows its contents, knows how long Hardison’s been carrying around this particular paperwork for an LLC in Eliot’s name. Well, in the name of one of Eliot’s aliases.

“Wolf’s Head?” Eliot asks, staring at the paperwork. 

“Yeah, cause that’s the sign you asked for, back at the Bat Cave. Also, archaically speakin’ a “wolf’s head” is an _—_ ”

Eliot sucks in a breath. “Outlaw.”

“These are just registration papers, right, cause I wanted to leave the rest up to you. We’ll go building shopping, and this time you read all the fine prin _—_ ” 

Eliot leans across her, capturing Hardison by the back of his neck and hauling him back toward him so their kiss meets directly in front of her face, their lips brushing her nose. Parker’s caught between them, but that’s okay. The exception to her rules. She _wants_ to be caught here. 

Anchored. 

Rooted. 

Home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hesitated before using Lincoln Cummings, as he is a real person, but that "foreclosure is harsh" speech is all his own words, given voluntarily in a newspaper interview, so I figured he deserved it. (Also, I wasn't coming up with a better bad guy name than /that/!) Outlaw gardens in HOAs that forbid them are a real thing, as are HOAs placing liens on houses, foreclosing, and selling at them at auction. Oh and embezzling. So. Much. Embezzling.


End file.
